- Inter-faculty Studies in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Computer Science
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Mathematics
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Computer Science
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Mathematics
(in Polish) Psychopatologie a reprezentacje umysłowe 3501-PRU19-S-OG
In the modern philosophy of psychiatry, the assumption that people suffering from various types of psychopathology can entertain beliefs and can generally have thoughts about various things is at least partly undermined. It is an open question, however, whether their thoughts, including hallucinatory and delusional states, really have content or whether observers merely ascribe their content to them as based on their external behavior. Maybe a person suffering from amnesia who unwittingly confabulates has already lost the ability to really think?
The aim of the seminar is to determine whether it is justified to adopt a perspective that denies certain mental states are contentful, i.e., are not representational. Thus, the antirepresentational account of cognitive disorders will be under analysis. The analyses will especially (although not only) appeal to teleosemantic accounts of mental representations, according to which representing is a function of mental mechanisms and representations are detectable by a cognitive system itself. This account is particularly well suited to the task, as delusional patients often lose the ability to critically evaluate the content of their thoughts. Do their thoughts therefore lose their content? Are these thoughts only in a figurative sense? Or maybe these disorders are even more complex in nature?
The research will focus on cognitive disorders, including hallucinations, confabulations, and psychoses, as well as on partially cognitive disorders, such as certain disorders of empathy, obsessive-compulsive disorders or aphantasia (the inability to create mental images).
An important point in analysis will be investigating a role of representational concepts in a broadly discussed issue of classification or systematization of mental, both in the context of RDoC and DSM-5. We will investigate a relation between classifications and general theories of mental disorders - from psychoanalitic and cognitive to recently proposed evolutionary or neuropsychoanalitic accounts. The question is whether representational concepts - especially representational content - should play an important role in such theories?
Type of course
general courses
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
Acquired knowledge:
K_W01, K_W02, K_W03, K_W05, K_W06, K_W07
Acquired competences:
K_U01, K_U02, K_U03, K_U04, K_U05, K_U06, K_U07, K_U08, K_U09
Acquired social competences:
K_K01, K_K02
Assessment criteria
Short commentaries to papers under discussion, student presentation about a selected paper, activity during classes
Bibliography
Bielecka K., Błądzę, więc myślę. Co to jest błędna reprezentacja?, Wydawnictwo UW,
Umysł. Prace z filozofii i kognitywistyki, 2019
Bielecka K., Marcinów M., Mental Misrepresentation in Non-human Psychopathology, „Biosemiotics” 10 (2), 2017, 195-210
Bolton, D. What is mental disorder? An essay in philosophy, science, and values. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Bortolotti, L., Delusions and other irrational beliefs. Oxford / New York, Oxford University Press, 2010
Fotopoulou, A., Pfaff D., Conway M.A., From the Couch to the Lab: Trends in Psychodynamic Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 2012
Hirstein, W., Brain fiction: self-deception and the riddle of confabulation. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005
Hutto, D., Radical Enactivism and Narrative Practice: Implications for Psychopathology, w: T. Fuchs, P. & H. Sattel (red.), Coherence and Disorders of the Embodied Self. Schattauer, 2010
Kincaid H., Sullivan J., Classifying Psychopathology, Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2014
Nesse, R. M. Good reasons for bad feelings: insights from the frontier of evolutionary psychiatry. New York, New York: Dutton 2019.
Ratcliffe, M., Experiences of depression. A study in phenomenology, Oxford University Press, 2015
Stinson, C., The absent body in psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and research. „Synthese”, 1-24, 2017
Additional information
Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:
- Inter-faculty Studies in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Computer Science
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Mathematics
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Computer Science
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Mathematics
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: